Telegraph Hill Quarry Cliff
Two brothers took a hill apart under people's houses and went on after a judge told them to stop.
Listen to this place’s story in Peplos.
How the story begins
Two brothers timed their charges on this hill to the Fourth of July cannons at the Presidio, so the guns would cover the noise of blasting that a judge had banned fourteen years before. That was in 1909. George and Harry Gray opened their quarry here in the early 1890s, with houses on the hill above. In January 1894 a blast sent a rockslide through a duplex on Vallejo Street. The owner won three thousand dollars, and the Grays went on blasting.
The rest is in the app. Peplos plays the full story when you reach the place. You can also listen ahead of time.
Visiting
Open streets. See the rock face from Sansome Street near Green Street. Calhoun Terrace, reached on foot from Union Street at the top of the hill, is a public dead-end lined with private homes.
Sources
- Gary Kamiya, Quarrymen hit few obstacles to blowing up hills (San Francisco Chronicle, 2014)
- Remember the quarries of Telegraph Hill (KQED Science)
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